Dan Rather Award Acceptance Speech

One of Bud
Benjamin's dreams was to expand the CBS Evening News to a full hour. And Bud
wasn't thinking of filling it with helicopter shots, celebrity gossip, and
punditry.

He imagined an
entire hour brimming with investigative reporting, exposés and dispatches from
around the world.

It was a
different time in journalism.A time
when professional duty was patriotic and the freedom of the press motivated and
inspired newsrooms.

I know it is
hard to believe--but it's true--newsrooms were not supposed to turn a profit.
Frankly, news was considered an acceptable loss leader on the balance sheet, a
brand builder and most of all a public service.

To keep our FCC
license and the public trust, we had to use the public's airwaves in the public
interest some of the time.

Yes, that's a
whole lot of "public."

But that's the
way it was. It's the way it should be again.

Today, how we
look and how we "present" information has become far more important than how we
gather it.

It's upside down
and backwards. And the worst part is...we
have gotten used to it.

The
caretakers of the Fourth Estate have, at times, left the building unattended.
Public interest be damned.

It
was Thomas Jefferson who noted in 1799 that "Our citizens may be deceived
for awhile, and have been deceived; but as long as the presses can be
protected, we may trust to them for light."

Jefferson trusted the press--not to stir up heat,
but to deliver insight.

Of course
freedom of the press and of speech both come with pitfalls. People can peddle
opinions as if they were facts. Those armed with the big, expensive megaphones
drown out those blowing whistles.

But now, we see
our fellow citizens taking to the streets.

And, that my
friends, is our cue to get back to work.... As the People of our nation begin
rising up, they expect the business of news to be about inquiry and
accountability.

And, luckily for
us, we can still do that...but, it will not often be within the confines of big
corporate media.

As you know, we
are living in an age when big money owns everything...including the news. That
cash bought a lot of silence for a long time. Enough time for unchecked power
to get this country tangled into messes all around the world. We all know that
money talks. But, so do the people.

They tire of
conflicts at home and abroad...conflicts that avert our eyes from the corruption
and callowness that does little more than spill our blood and misspend our
treasure.

"We had fed the
heart on fantasies," wrote William Butler Yeats, "the heart's grown brutal from
the fare."

In other words, we have
gotten used to it.

What happens to
a country when the press helps divide people into Us and Them? When it fans
the flames of conflict and calls it reporting?

We need to
restore, at some point, the teaching of the craft of journalism. The best way
to protect journalists is to teach them how to do journalism and, therefore,
protect themselves from becoming irrelevant.

I am reminded of
the finest speech ever made on the subject of television journalism. It was
given by Ed Murrow in 1958. Murrow said,

"This instrument
can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But, it can do
so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those
ends...otherwise, it is merely wires and lights in a box."

Dear friends,
from both the journalist and corporate worlds we must untangle the wires from
the lights.We must halt the steady
decline of broadcast journalism and the endless compromises to the boardroom.

Some say it is
too late. That Congress wrote our epitaph in 1996 when they all came together
and passed the Telecommunications Deregulation Act. Since then, the lights in a
box have gotten brighter and flashier...but the truth dimmer and dimmer.

And...we have gotten used to
it.

The late great
Molly Ivins used to tell a story about what happens when fear grips a country.

Molly liked to tell the story
about her late friend, the celebrated Texas
civil libertarian John Henry Faulk, who, as a boy of six, went with his
seven-year-old friend, Boots Cooper, to rid the family henhouse of a harmless
chicken snake. From its high perch, the boys found themselves eyeball to
eyeball with the snake. Growing up in Texas, it's not uncommon to see a chicken
snake...but being close enough to spit in the snake's eye must have been quite
disconcerting.

As Molly would tell the story,
the two boys, ran out of the henhouse so fast they nearly tore off the henhouse
door...not to mention doing damage to themselves in the process.

When Faulk's mother reminded the
boys that chicken snakes are not dangerous, Boots Cooper responded, "Yes,
ma'am, but some things will scare you so bad, you'll hurt yourself."

That is what we have been subject
to as a country. We have been so afraid; so hell bent on destroying
enemies...both real and imagined...both foreign and domestic...we have hurt ourselves,
and we have diminished out freedom and damaged our democracy.

You are probably asking yourself
now what you should do.

There are so many wrongs to make
right, it is going to get messier before it gets better.

We have to begin asking the hard
questions once again.

We have to demand and earn back
the respect that gave us the right to ask them.

We must protect whistleblowers by
using our megaphones to make their risky admissions even louder.

We must demand access to all
those taking risks to challenge power.

We must refuse to simply read
press releases and rely on official sources.

And we must
begin to enforce our own professional code of ethics. Refuse to compromise.
Going along to get along is getting us nowhere.

Tonight, if I can convince you of
anything, it is to buck the current system. Remember anew that you are a public
servant and your business is protecting the public from harm. Even if those
doing harm also pay your salary.

To once again quote Ed Murrow,
there is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance,
intolerance and indifference...this weapon of television could be useful.